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India’s startup ecosystem raised nearly $11 billion in 2025, but investors wrote far fewer checks and grew more selective about where they took risk, underscoring how the world’s third most-funded startup market is diverging from the AI-fueled capital concentration seen in the U.S. The selective approach was most evident in deal-making. The number of startup funding rounds fell by nearly 39% from a year earlier, to 1,518 deals, according to Tracxn. Total funding slipped more modestly — down just over 17% to $10.5 billion. That pullback was not uniform. Seed-stage funding fell sharply to $1.1 billion in 2025, down 30%…

Tecno unveiled the Pova Curve in May, and we expected its successor to arrive during the same period next year. But it appears the Tecno Pova Curve 2 may launch early, as its render and specs have surfaced online. The source claims that the Tecno Pova Curve 2 will be powered by the yet-to-be-announced Dimensity 7100 SoC. The smartphone will run Android 16-based HiOS 16 UI out of the box and have three memory options – 8GB/128GB, 8GB/256GB, and 12GB/256GB. The Tecno Pova Curve 2 will pack a 6.78″ 144Hz curved AMOLED display of 1.5K resolution, and under the hood…

What does it take to raise Series A in today’s market?  The goalposts have moved, the stakes are higher, and investors seem pickier than ever as the AI boom reshapes the industry. At TechCrunch Disrupt, three investors — Thomas Green of Insight Partners, Moxxie Ventures’ Katie Stanton, and GV’s Sangeen Zeb — broke down what they’ll be looking for in the new year. The numbers tell a clear story. Fewer rounds are getting funded but deal sizes have grown, said Green citing a study.    “It has never been easier to start a company, and it has never been harder to build something…

Six influencers recently announced that they are leaving esports group FaZe Clan following unsuccessful contract negotiations with new management. Bloomberg reports that influencers known as Adapt, Jason, Ronaldo, Lacy, Rage, and Silky — the entire roster on the FaZe Clan website — all announced that they are leaving the group.  Adapt wrote on X that he’d spent 14 years as part of FaZe Clan: “Over half of my life, I’d be lying if I said this didn’t hurt, but it had to be done.” Another FaZe Clan member who left in August had described the situation as one where the…

The information comes from an official support page in Hindi, which also clearly states that the feature will be rolling out gradually to users, so don’t expect to see this option right away, if at all. Reading through the support page, the way it works is that once every 12 months, Google will allow you to “change” the email address associated with your Google account. In actuality, the process is more like adding a new alias email to your account since your old email address will not be deleted and will remain functional. You still get one email inbox and…

A federal judge has temporarily blocked the Trump administration from arresting or deporting Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH). The New York Times reports that Ahmed is one of five researchers and regulators whose work around online abuse and disinformation drew the ire of the U.S. State Department, which declared this week that they are barred from the United States. Secretary of State Marco Rubio described the targeted individuals as “radical activists and weaponized NGOs” who have “led organized efforts to coerce American platforms to censor, demonetize, and suppress American viewpoints they oppose.”  While Ahmed…

Motorola seems to be on a roll with announcements. At the end of October, the company launched the Edge 70, as the global version of the X70 Air. As the name suggests, it is a device that emphasizes a slim body. We aren’t exactly sure why Motorola decided to go through with copying the trend after both Apple and Samsung had rather disappointing sales on their “air” devices. Still, for better or worse, all signs point towards an upcoming X70 Air Pro model, likely to be called the Edge 70 Pro globally. Motorola put out an official teaser image for…

For more than a decade, dozens of journalists and human rights activists have been targeted and hacked by governments all over the world. Cops and spies in Ethiopia, Greece, Hungary, India, Mexico, Poland, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates, among others, have used sophisticated spyware to compromise the phones of these victims, who at times have also faced real-world violence being intimidated, harassed, and in extreme cases, even murdered. In the last few years, in the fight to protect these higher-risk communities, a team of a dozen digital security experts, mostly based in Costa Rica, Manila, and Tunisia, among other…

Every year, TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield pitch contest draws thousands of applicants. We whittle those applications down to the top 200 contenders, and of them, the top 20 compete on the big stage to become the winner, taking home the Startup Battlefield Cup and a cash prize of $100,000. But the remaining 180 startups all blew us away as well in their respective categories and compete in their own pitch competition. Here is the full list of the clean tech and energy Startup Battlefield 200 selectees, along with a note on why they landed in the competition.  AraBat  What it does:…

Google’s hardware division didn’t have a particularly strong 2025, releasing new phones that didn’t really stand out as particularly innovative. That’s not the best strategy in any market, but it’s particularly damaging in those outside the US where more makers are present. And, sure, Google isn’t primarily a hardware company, but it makes phones, earbuds, and smartwatches every year and fails to make a meaningful market impact against the likes of Samsung and Apple, its main rivals. Still, Google’s phones are getting better and better even if not always at an impressive pace. There are some winners, so let’s look…